As the founder and former chairman and CEO of Gateway Inc., Ted Waitt helped revolutionize how people use technology to live, work and play by being a pioneer in the direct marketing of personal computers. He retired from Gateway in 2005 to turn his attention to being a full-time philanthropist and entrepreneur.

He has formed two enterprises that are his chief interests: Avalon Capital Group Inc., a wholly owned, billion-dollar, private investment company with diverse interests in technology, health care, finance and real estate; and the Waitt Family Foundation and Institutes, nonprofit organizations dedicated to using technology to improve mankind's knowledge through historical and scientific exploration.

Through the Waitt Family Foundation, Waitt has become one of America's 50 most generous philanthropists, according to Business Week. Established in 1993, the foundation initially focused on domestic-violence prevention and community development, knowing that building stronger families and societies will help foster the vision of a better world.

The creation of the Waitt Institutes in 2005—the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery, the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention, and the Waitt Institute for Scientific Breakthroughs—has allowed the foundation to broaden its program interests to the global community. In addition to co-funding the project to restore, translate and authenticate the codex containing the only known Gospel of Judas, the Institute for Historical Discovery is also funding National Geographic's Genographic Project to map human migratory trends and learn more about how the Earth was populated, and a project by Ancient Egypt Research Associates to uncover a city where the pyramid builders were thought to have lived.

Waitt is chairman of the Founding Fathers campaign of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, just one of the efforts that he supports in the fight to prevent domestic violence. He was appointed by Congress to serve on the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce and has served on numerous other corporate and philanthropic boards of directors, including the Council of Advisors of the National Geographic Society and the board of the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies.